Opinion: Google sets stage for political compromise on Chinese censorship

Google is threatening to pull out of China over censorship and a hacking incident, but the U.S. will likely help negotiate a compromise.

PORTLAND, Ore.  Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Chinese cyber attacks on Google's servers has prompted the search giant to threaten to close down its China operations unless Beijing backs off and allows the company to operate an unfiltered search engine.

Google claims that cyber attacks originating in China last month breached its (and 20 other company's) corporate servers to read the e-mail of Chinese human rights advocates. According to a posting on Tuesday (Jan. 12) by on his blog, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond claimed the attacks originated in China, but only breached two accounts held by Chinese human rights advocates. Google also said it found that the e-mail accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based human rights groups in China were being routinely breached by hackers who had obtained their passwords through phishing scams or malware.

Google's threat to pull the plug on its Chinese operations is commendable, especially when compared to other service providers like Cisco Systems, which have been repeatedly criticized for providing the networking tools used by Chinese authorities to censor Internet content.

If you inspect Google's declaration closely, however, you will find ample elbow room for remaining in the Chinese market, prompting me to predict that the issue will likely be settled through a high-level political compromises as part of ongoing U.S.-Chinese trade talks.

Google's Durmmond hinted as much when he wrote that its discovery "goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech." That statement, plus the suspicion that the sophistication of the cyber attack makes it likely that they were government-sponsored, points to a U.S.-negotiated political solution.

After all, the U.S. has already complained about the strict new Internet censorship rules that include the Great Firewall of China, deep packet inspections, 50-cent bloggers (who are paid to support censorship in China), and edge-of-network restrictions such as China's Green Dam Youth Escort software which filters Internet content reaching PCs there.

Google's gambit "may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," the company said, which sounds like the first volley in a political tug-of-war that will inevitably result in compromise. And the U.S. Trade Representative Representative Ron Kirk could lead the negotiations.

After all, why does the U.S. nurture close economic relations with China?. Not because of Beijing's views on human rights. The reason is simple: From an economic standpoint, each country needs the other.

Google's threat to pull-out of China unless it can turn off the government mandated censorship is commendable. Why not canvass other companies to join Google in facing down the Chinese? What companies do you think should join with Google to fight for human rights in China?

Google wants to fight for the freedom of speech and expression in China? Google is an angel? How rediculous it is!
I can't stop my laughing when Google plays the game of human rights, like a poitician. If anyone wants to find something behind what they said, just do some simple business research on Google.cn. How much market share did Google.cn get after five years in China? How much revenu did Google.cn bring to headquater?

I admire Google for taking a hard position on the Chinese censorship issue. I lived in China for an ex patriot assignment for 4 years. The government censored cnn.com for over 10 years because of CNN reports about the Tiananmen conflict.
Maybe Google can do something that is right since the US government won't do it. All humans should have access to information without censorship. I guess this works well to subjugate as well as religion except takes a more direct approach.
It's always about power, money and control without regard to humanistic impact.

In the era of e-commerce, internet censorship can clearly be viewed as a form of protectionism. In this case it is clear that Google's competitor was being protected. Given that China recently lost a big WTO case against its policy of restricting foreign media imports, there is a chance to bring this issue up with the WTO as well.

The Chinese government and US government are the same. What do you think FBI/CI are doing? China is a beginer and US is an expert at censorship. That's the difference. Our email, phone calls and money
transactions are all monitored by US government.
Google wants publicity.